Photo: Naresh Newar/IRIN  | | Children have been particular victims of the conflict - at the hands of both the rebels and security forces. |
Children have been particular victims of the conflict - at the hands of both the rebels and security forces. Abduction of students by the Maoists for forced indoctrination programmes still continues even after the ceasefire was announced. They are also subject to intimidation and harassment by security force soldiers.
Credit: Naresh Newar/IRIN |
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Sixteen year-old Phulkumari Sharma is one of many Nepali children to suffer in the nine years of conflict since Maoists began their rebellion against the state. In late 2004, her father, an ordinary farmer, was arrested on suspicion of supporting the rebels. He subsequently died at the hands of Nepal's security forces.
“He’s dead and I don’t want to say anything,” said Sharma, staring blankly at the floor. Her teachers have tried hard to help her, but they say it is an impossible task.
“Children are so traumatised, and the Maoist rebels and security forces should be blamed for making their lives this way,” said Sharma’s teacher Min Bahadur Pun, in Seri Gaun, a village in Rukum, one of Nepal’s most conflict-ridden districts.
The village school has 50 internally displaced children who fled their villages with their parents or friends, and are living in rundown rented houses in Musikot. The town is a regional hub, a fortified centre controlled by the army and the armed police force. Hundreds of soldiers can be seen patrolling in every corner of Musikot, one of the few places still under government control in the region.
It is a disturbing sight for many children - especially those who had come to the town to escape the violence of their villages.
Rita Buda is a bright, bubbly 15 year-old who, with her parents and young siblings, gave up the family house and land to find peace and normality in the district centre.
Before they arrived in Musikot, Buda had been abducted by Maoist rebels, who forced her to join their foot soldiers in ambushing government forces and planting bombs. The Maoists let Buda go after her mother negotiated her release, promising to send her back as an adult when she would be of more use.
The family now have to pay a “donation” to the insurgents every month, an option the rebels offer to those families who do not want their children to join up.
“They threatened to kill me if I tried to run away,” explained Buda, as she recalled her nightmarish experience. She had been kidnapped by six rebels on her way to school. They made her walk for several days to reach their destination. Then they forced her to cook and wash dishes in camp overnight.
According to a Nepali child-rights group, Child Workers in Nepal, over 400 children have been killed, around 500 injured or disabled, and as many as 8,000 have lost their parents or close relatives since the war began in 1996. About 40,000 children, it says, have been displaced from their homes.
A 2005 report by an international human rights group, Amnesty International, said Nepalese children were being killed in the conflict, as well as being illegally detained and tortured, raped, abducted and recruited for military activity.
Many children have been orphaned in the last ten years of Maoist conflict. Scores have become displaced, some suffering also from malnutrition and ill-health. A large number are now working as labourers in exploitative and unsafe working environments.
Credit: Naresh Newar/IRIN |
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“The situation for the children has barely changed and they continue to suffer,” said activist Tarak Dhital from Children As a Zone of Peace, a campaigning group run by local NGOs.
Although the number of deaths has decreased since the Maoists declared temporary unilateral ceasefires in September and December 2005, child abduction and the forcible indoctrination of young people has continued unabated.
Children are also more prone to death and injury from land mines and unexploded ordinance that litter areas of conflict. In October 2005, two children were killed when a bomb left by the rebels in one of east Nepal’s most conflict-affected districts, exploded while they prodded it with a stick.
According to the Informal Sector Service Centre (INSEC), a prominent Nepali rights group, nearly 3,000 children have been abducted since the September 2005 ceasefire. Even if they are eventually released unharmed, the experience leaves deep mental scars.
“During the abductions, children are filled with terror. Their first thought is that they may get caught in the crossfire when the Maoist rebels holding them suddenly encounter the security forces,” explained activist Rupesh Nepal from INSEC.
For many of those children abducted or forced to work for the rebellion, the trauma does not end when they are released. Activists say many are subjected to interrogation and arrest by the security forces, who accuse them of collusion, or believe they may yield valuable intelligence.
Nepal has come under severe international criticism for the failure of both the state and of the insurgents to respect and protect the rights of children.
In June 2005, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported that armed conflict had made it difficult to implement the Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights treaty which Nepal ratified in 1996.
“The committee notes with grave concern the reports of abduction and forcible conscription of children by the armed groups,” was one of its concluding remarks.
“The situation of children is even more disturbing today. There are more conflict orphans, more vulnerable children subject to sexual abuse and forced labour,” explained activist Biswo Khadga whose NGO, Maiti Nepal, has been sheltering a large number of female children affected by the conflict.
Most, she said, suffered from psychological effects as a result of the conflict. “Our only hope is that peace is restored soon so that more children will not have to suffer,” said Khadga.
(All names of children in this report have been changed to protect their identity)
[ENDS]
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